New findings after arrest: Tajik (30) allegedly spied on Cologne Cathedral for a terrorist attack

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Supporters of an Islamist terrorist cell are said to have planned to carry out attacks in Europe between Christmas and New Year. The Cologne Cathedral, among others, is said to have been the target of the attacks.

Ultimately, the police were able to arrest five suspects. Incredibly, it has now emerged that one of them may have previously spied on the cathedral. “We know he was there,” security sources said Thursday. The other target of the group, to which the 30-year-old has been linked, is said to be St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna.

Terrorists are followers of Islamic State

Security circles suspect that the group could be a terrorist cell of the Islamic State, specifically its regional branch “Khorasan Province” (ISPK), which competes with the Islamic Taliban in Afghanistan. The “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” had reported this earlier.

Police searched an apartment in Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia) with special units on Christmas Eve and took five men into custody. While four of them were released, emergency services took the 30-year-old Tajik into custody “to avert danger”. The administrative court in Oberhausen confirmed that the long-term detention imposed on the 30-year-old until January 7 was admissible.

Tajiks are said to have planned attacks before

In July, the German federal prosecutor’s office uncovered a suspected Islamist terrorist cell in North Rhine-Westphalia and arrested seven suspects. The men, who are also mainly from Tajikistan, are accused of planning attacks in Germany and supporting the terrorist organization Islamic State. They are also said to be members of the IS branch ISPK.

As early as 2019, Tajik IS terrorists in Neuss near Düsseldorf planned to kill an Islam critic. Because some of them had been under police surveillance for a long time, special units were able to prevent the assassination attempt.

The Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf sentenced five men from Tajikistan to prison terms of between four and nine and a half years in 2022. The Tajiks came to Germany in 2015 and founded an IS terrorist cell in 2019. The Federal Court of Justice confirmed her conviction this year. (SDA)

Source: Blick